Leachman sentencing delayed as attorney asks for new trial

By SUSAN FIELD/@sfield_msun

Friday, June 14, 2013

A last-minute filing in Isabella County Trial Court Friday halted the scheduled sentencing of a Mt. Pleasant man convicted of second-degree murder.

Curtis Richard Leachman’s attorney, Thomas Weiss, filed a motion requesting a new trial about an hour and a half before Judge Mark Duthie was to sentence Leachman, who was convicted May 23 in the death of Tyrone Stanley in November.

Duthie said he found out about the motion at about 1:30 p.m. Friday, and decided to postpone Leachman’s sentencing.

Duthie scheduled a motion hearing for 3 p.m. July 19, and told Chief Assistant Prosecutor Robert Holmes to have a response to the motion filed by July 16.

If Duthie denies Weiss’ motion, he will sentence Leachman immediately after that hearing.

Duthie apologized to Stanley’s family and friends, who arrived at the courthouse prepared for the sentencing.

Weiss cited in the motion the denial of Leachman’s right to claim self-defense in the Nov. 24 death of Stanley, 20, in a hallway outside Leachman’s apartment.

Weiss said in the motion that Duthie’s denials of a request for a psychologist to testify on Leachman’s frame of mind and an engineer or builder to testify about the integrity of the lock on the door to the apartment that Leachman was subleasing compromised his right to a fair trial.

Weiss also said Holmes “refusal to honor defendant’s request to take the dead bolt from Apt. A into evidence” and his “ignoring defense request for blood testing of the hallway carpet” were also cause for a new trial.

In denying Weiss’ request for a psychologist to testify, Duthie said Leachman would have to be sent to the Center for Forensic Psychiatry in Ypsilanti for a psychological evaluation, but Weiss said Friday that he was not looking for an insanity defense.

Testimony at the trial indicated that there was a chain of events leading to the fight between Stanley, who was at a party at a neighboring apartment at 112 S. Main St. the morning of his stabbing death. Those events incluced Stanley and others kicking Leachman’s apartment door, knocking holes in the drywall outside the apartment, calling Leachman to fight, “and generally shouting down and belittling Mr. Leachman in front of others,” Weiss said in the brief.

Leachman, Weiss said, would have benefitted from a psychologist testifying as to whether “an enhanced state of excitement or fear could have reasonably been induced in Mr. Leachman such that he reasonably believed that he was in danger of being killed or seriously injured.”

Weiss also argued in the motion that the integrity of the door into Leachman’s apartment was a significant issue that limited the self-defense argument at trial.

Weiss said in the motion that a transcript of a Dec. 20 hearing indicated that cost containment was a reason the judge denied the psychologist and engineer/builder to testify.

Other issues Weiss cited in the motion were a denial of a defense request to instruct the jury that the common hallway between the apartments was to be considered part of Leachman’s home for the purposes of assessing self-defense, Holmes’ “abuse of rebuttal argument,” Stanley’s being on probation at the time of his death consuming liquor and drugs and ineffective assistance of counsel.

Weiss said in the motion that he “fell short for various reasons,” including his telling Holmes of his intent to argue self-defense, by not appealing what he thought to be erroneous and by not insisting more strenuously that the prosecution “develop exculpatory evidence in spite of their willful neglect.”

(Susan Field can be reached at 989-779-6075, sfield@michigannewspapers.com or follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/#!/susan.k.field.)